How do I clone two laptops without removing the hard drives?

[Sanam3]

Hi folks,

I have two identical HP EliteBooks 8440p, one of which works fine. I want to clone the working laptop's hard drive to the other laptop's hard drive without having to remove the two HDDs. Is it possible/how can I do this?

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

At some point, one drive or the other, or both, will need to be removed.

 

[geofelt]

Buy a simple usb to sata cable.
Remove the non working drive and clone the working drive to the usb attached drive.

I might suggest that this is an opportune time to convert to a ssd. It makes an amazing performance improvement.

 

[Sanam3]

Can I try this though? I clone working laptop's HDD to an external HDD. I then take the external HDD and clone that to my other laptop's HDD.
If it will work, can you advise me on doing it with a Linux LiveCD?

 

[Sanam3]

Buy a simple usb to sata cable.
Remove the non working drive and clone the working drive to the usb attached drive.

I might suggest that this is an opportune time to convert to a ssd. It makes an amazing performance improvement.

I'm on a time crunch, so I'm not in the position to buy a USB to SATA cable, let alone find the one I have. D:
I do agree about the SSD part. I upgraded my home-PC to a ADATA 32 GB SSD and set up symlinks. However, the laptops I'm working with aren't that special enough to deserve SSDs.

 

[Sanam3]

At some point, one drive or the other, or both, will need to be removed.

Can I try this though? I clone working laptop's HDD to an external HDD. I then take the external HDD and clone that to my other laptop's HDD.
If it will work, can you advise me on doing it with a Linux LiveCD?

 

[USAFRet]

At some point, one drive or the other, or both, will need to be removed.

Can I try this though? I clone working laptop's HDD to an external HDD. I then take the external HDD and clone that to my other laptop's HDD.
If it will work, can you advise me on doing it with a Linux LiveCD?

This depends on what exactly is broken on the broken laptop. Will it boot from a CD/DVD?
And no, a Linux LiveCD won't work. See CloneZilla to do that.

 

[Sanam3]

At some point, one drive or the other, or both, will need to be removed.

Can I try this though? I clone working laptop's HDD to an external HDD. I then take the external HDD and clone that to my other laptop's HDD.
If it will work, can you advise me on doing it with a Linux LiveCD?

This depends on what exactly is broken on the broken laptop. Will it boot from a CD/DVD?
And no, a Linux LiveCD won't work. See CloneZilla to do that.

Alright, I'll take a look at Clonezilla. The broken laptop will still boot CD/DVD or USB media! Otherwise, will CloneZilla work with the idea I proposed?

 

[USAFRet]

Alright, I'll take a look at Clonezilla. The broken laptop will still boot CD/DVD or USB media! Otherwise, will CloneZilla work with the idea I proposed?

Probably. Be prepared to lose whatever exists on the external drive.

And then you will eventually run into the Windows licensing issue. Different motherboards....

 

[Sanam3]

Alright, I'll take a look at Clonezilla. The broken laptop will still boot CD/DVD or USB media! Otherwise, will CloneZilla work with the idea I proposed?

Probably. Be prepared to lose whatever exists on the external drive.

And then you will eventually run into the Windows licensing issue. Different motherboards....

Hmmmmm..... They're the same hardware in and out. I'll just back up ext HDD. Licensing... should not be an issue now that I think about it since I'm doing the cloning for my school's IT department. It'll just be a VLK, and since both laptops are school laptops, it should be fine.